


But Maybe You'll Sleep When You're Dead

by AstroGirl



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Introspection, Regeneration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 00:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14008059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: It's not that he's afraid of change.   It's just that now seems like a good time to stop.





	But Maybe You'll Sleep When You're Dead

**Author's Note:**

> I initially found the Doctor's refusal to let himself regenerate in "The Doctor Falls" confusing and hard to understand. So I went off and thought about it. A lot. This fic is one of the results. It was written for Gen Prompt Bingo, for the prompt "Exhaustion."
> 
> Warnings: Contains spoilers for "The Doctor Falls," and I guess also for Classic Who's Trial of a Time Lord stories. Also contains... well, perhaps not suicidal thoughts, exactly, but something close enough to that.

It's not that he's afraid of change. Of course he isn't. That would be absurd. Completely, utterly absurd.

Oh, all right. All right. He is, a little. More than a little, if he's honest. Which he usually isn't, but, hey, why not give it a try, here at the end? The thought of turning into someone else, yet _again_ , someone he might not even like if he met them, that's always... irritating. Irritating, and, okay, fine, a little frightening. Maybe a little sad. 

But it's not just about knowing you might turn into someone with terrible fashion sense and a stupid sense of humor, is it? Someone who might look back on you and sneer, glad that he's not _that_ man anymore. That's bad enough, but it's part of life, isn't it? Even people who don't regenerate feel that way sometimes.

No. It's that right now, _this_ Doctor... He knows who he is. He understands his flaws, his fears, his potential for giving in to the darkness. He knows how to handle them, how to keep them in check, how to channel them into something kind. It's taken him a while, but he's _there_. What if he loses that again? What if he changes into something worse?

It's possible. It's always possible. If the Master can change for the better – and she did, he _knows_ she did, even if, in the end, it wasn't quite enough – then how does he know he won't change for the worse, one of these days? He doesn't. In fact, he knows precisely the opposite, because he's _seen_ it. Whatever set of circumstances produced the Valeyard probably thoroughly unhappened in the ludicrous tangle of timelines the universe unraveled into during the War, but somewhere, somewhen, that darkness was something he became. Would have become. Still might become, even if he's spent all his lifetimes since refusing to believe it, or refusing to think about it at all.

Well, now is the time to think about it. Now, when he knows who he is. Now, when he's a version of him he trusts to make this choice. Because, yes, maybe his next incarnation, if he allows it to happen, will be lovely. Better than this one. Maybe he'll have more patience and less disturbing eyebrows. Maybe the one after that will take in stray cats, or or teach the Sontarans the power of love, or something equally useful and saccharine. 

But how long can he keep that up? He doesn't have an expiration date now, not that he knows of. And if he's learned anything in his already stupidly long life, it's that immortality isn't good for you. It doesn't make you less afraid. It doesn't make you kinder. The longer people live, the less they're capable of thinking about anything beyond their own life. He likes to think he'd be immune to that, but he liked to think he could never become the person he was during the War, too. The thought of going through that loss of part of himself again, maybe more slowly, maybe without realizing it, and this time never coming back from it, it makes him... Well. It makes him want to die. Convenient, under the circumstances. 

He's already outlived enough of his friends, anyway. Like the dear old infuriating Brigadier, gone when he wasn't looking. Like the dear new amazing Bill, who he couldn't save, no matter how hard he tried to pretend he could. They come and they go. And they go. And they go. It's starting to wear on him. And, yes, yes, he has a time machine. No one's ever dead when you have a time machine. Except, they _are_. They are if their timeline is closed to you, fixed in place with every moment you ever met accounted for. They are if you visit them in their youth, and look them in their eyes, and can't help but _know_. He had enough of that with River. He doesn't want to do it again.

And, honestly, he's tired. Beyond tired. He's exhausted. He's lived for billions of years, if you count it right. He might not remember all of those years, might not technically have lived through most of them, but there are days when he'd swear he can feel every one of them. After all that, hasn't he earned a little rest?

Oh, but Doctor, he hears them say, the universe _needs_ you! Well, does it? Does it really? Isn't it time the universe started learning how to handle its own affairs? It's probably not good for people, having someone around all the time to step in and fix all their mistakes. And he's got to be done with it sometime, doesn't he? Sooner or later, he'll have solved every problem in the universe. That's just logic. A mathematical inevitability, if the universe is finite, and he isn't. Maybe he's already done everything he needed to do. Or maybe it's time for someone else to have a go. Maybe he doesn't owe the universe his soul. Maybe no one should have to spend a literal eternity cleaning up other people's messes, no matter how much fun it is most of the time. 

And it's already been a hell of a run. _So much_ running. So much of everything. At this point, what _hasn't_ he done? He's done domestic. He's done madman in a box. He's done warrior. He's done healer. He's done friend, husband, father, fugitive, wanderer, savior. He's been tall and short, stout and thin, pleasant and grumpy, carefree and brooding. He's seen so much, done so much, and he's loved so much of it. Even the worst parts, the things that made him want to rip his hearts out, even the things that made him hate himself a little, through it all, he's always loved the universe. Loved its beauty and its strangeness and its people and its _everything_. Even the terrible, ugly parts, because he's always seen the ways in which they could be better.

But he's not sure _he_ will ever be any better than this. He's not sure that him going on and on will be better for anyone. And he's not sure there's anything new and important left to do, anything new and interesting left to be.

Well, if he happens to think of something, there's still a little time left to change his mind. But right now, he's just looking forward to some peace. That, after all, will _definitely_ be new.


End file.
